Natural Causes of Lycanthropy: Magical Creatures, A Weiser Books Collection

By Sabine Baring-Gould and Varla A. Ventura

Varla Ventura, fan favorite on Huffington Post’s Weird News, frequent guest on Coast to Coast, and bestselling author of The Book of the Bizarre and Beyond Bizarre, introduces a new Weiser Books Collection of forgotten crypto-classics. Magical Creatures is a hair-raising herd of affordable digital editions, curated with Varla’s affectionate and unerring eye for the fantastic.

We are all werewolves. Or at least, according to supernatural expert Sabine Baring-Gould, we are all capable of becoming werewolves. Written in 1868, this selection from Baring-Gould's massive tome on werewolves will have you locking the doors and looking over your shoulder. Into the mirror.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Red Wheel Weiser
• Release date: Feb 10, 2012
• ISBN: 9781619400351

Book preview

Be the Change

We are all werewolves. At least, according to Sabine Baring-Gould all humans have the capacity for licentious lust and blood thirst. We just possess it in varying degrees. From the wicked (literal) blood baths of Madame Bathory to the stabbing knife of Jack the Ripper to the young child whose curiosity drives him to pluck the wings from a fly, there are gradients to these destructive urges. So by this measure being a werewolf is a very real and realistic thing.

In Natural Causes of Lycanthropy, we are introduced to the idea that werewolves are both victims and predators. The abuses of an early childhood can lead to the path of the werewolf. The madness of an iron-deficient pregnancy can bring a woman to bare her teeth in a beast-like fashion. Baring-Gould wants us to understand one thing: werewolves exist.

Werewolves are an interesting pack. Not quite as sexy as a vampire and not as revered as a witch, their place in the annals of horror has been one of mixed sympathy and disdain—Teen Wolf being the exception to both emotions. The werewolf appears to be older and more culturally universal than the likes of vampires or other supernatural creatures. Though many of us think of the classic woodland man-turned-wolf, there are many cross-cultural variants of werewolves, often referred to as shape-shifters. In Chinese legends we find the P'an Hu, the Wendigo of Algonquian peoples, the Cajun Rougarou or Roux-Ga-Roux. Our literary past is littered with werewolves, most famously the Big Bad Wolf himself who lurks in the forest and lusts after Little Red Riding Hood.